I’ve just finished my third portents zine, textile portents. Since I started making these, I’ve gotten lots of questions about them so I thought I would indulge myself in a FAQ section. 

Frequently asked question (FAQ)

What is a portent?

My first portents zine was portents i ignored, which I published in August 2024. It was initially called ‘foxes in the forest’ – I had a handful of encounters with the natural world I wanted to make sense of. One of my big goals in 2024 was to practice thinking more visually so I decided to hand illustrate it, with each illustration blending with the words – the phrasing and illustrations developed in tandem. 

I didn’t land on the word ‘portent’ until I needed to draw the cover. Portent is essentially a synonym for ‘omen’: a sign of something to come (see also ‘portend’) . I wanted the zines to feel very magical and alluring. 

Questions I wish were frequently asked after the vocab expansion is done (QIWWFAAVED)

How is each portents volume different? What unites them?

The portents i ignored were gathered over many years, mostly outside of New Zealand. I was reconstructing them from memory. I think this gives the zine a particularly magical, dreamy effect and most of the portents are in first person. 

suburban portents stemmed from a desire to see portents in my humdrum Auckland suburban existence, and were gathered over just a few months. I didn’t want readers to feel that portents had to require exotic animals or 5000 metre mountains to experience. In keeping with my “dispatches from car culture” I was especially focused on portents connected to fossil fuels and post-fossil fuel futures. Most of the portents don’t have a direct pronoun.

textile portents has a more specific theme – these are signs connected to our relationships to fabric and fibre. Some of these portents are more abstract; one of them is something I did not directly experience and was based on research instead. I’m interested in how fibre and fabric is part of community, so many of the portents have possessive pronouns which suggest the speaker is observing other people relating to each other through portents.

Each zine has a few shortlisted portents which didn’t quite make it in; I wasn’t able to nail the phrasing or the illustration for them to feel in keeping with the other portents. 

Why do you write them? 

Mostly because it’s fun! However, each portents zine has a little ‘mission statement’ on the back cover which is connected to the tone of the zine. (The back cover is inspired by classified ads except I do NOT make a profit from the zines lol). Added up I think these present the portents project pretty well.

Portents i ignored: all experiences depicted in this zine are a product of memory and/or creative licence. Please take care, portents have not been subjected to clinical trials. BE CAREFUL. Sometimes portents should be ignored. 

Suburban portents: watch carefully for portents of broken oil, ageing cars, microbial resistance, symbiosis, repair, public transport, local lions, storms to weather and utter nourishment. Portent interpretation requires practice, attention and courage. 

Textile portents: a portent is a way to see clearly: the world as it is, or the world as it could be. Not all portents make sense; mostly good ideas presents portents without interpretation. The world will always have portents but it might not always have plastic fabric, underpaid workers or grandmothers, who are not immortal. Keep mending and keep looking. 

What are the illustrations? 

portents i ignored was illustrated with pen and ink on paper. suburban portents used a mix of photography and pen, which was then scanned in. because I don’t like my handwriting much I decided to do the writing digitally, which made things easier but maybe lost a bit a personality? After collaborating with Shreyas for the photography I decided that each future portent zine would involved a different illustration style. 

I felt really stuck for the third zine’s illustrations until I realised that textile crafts might be an option! This third zine spent a lot longer in the ideation phase, partially because I was procrastinating the illustration. I found the baby bootee in a gutter in June or July 2025 and didn’t finish the zine until the end of November. 

The bootee was the only illustration I didn’t make; I sewed scrap fabrics together to patchwork the Canterbury plains/planes portent, I knitted a teeny tiny jumper and partially unravelled it for the jumper portent, I wove a little carpet with my Swift Mending Loom, I embroidered the cover and the love story portent. The river/denim portent was slightly sneaky repurposing, it was a felted patch on a top I was doing a bunch of mending experimentation on.  

There are some pen and ink components in textile portents on the front and back covers but most of the other illustrations are done digitally. There are also a few background photos to help make some of the portents more interesting – one of these is a topomap screenshot (thanks LINZ) but the other are photos by me. This process did not hugely spark joy for me, and I would like to get better at digital design. At leas it was fun to play with repeating the same image, something I had talked to Mima about and we had done some mock-ups of when she was showing me Photoshop at her house one time. I’d love to get confident using Photoshop/InDesign/other open source versions of these tools which don’t send profit to Adobe. But for now I am making Canva work and hoping it’s not tooooooo “Canva aesthetic”. 

Honestly, I almost didn’t want to publish textile portents because I was unhappy at the difference between how long the illustrations had taken (many hours!) and feeling that they looking kind of ugly. But I’ve only been able to publish zines by embracing my imperfect process and was itching to get this out of my system… so hopefully it’s OK! A fun side-effect is how I now have a collection of random physical objects to add to my zine archives, which are increasingly looking like they need more than one desk drawer. 

I don’t really have any ideas for future portents zines; if I made one it would have to have a title other than _ portents. Maybe there is something in portents of the senses where it is something to hear, something to see, something to taste etc.? While I reserve the right to change my mind, I think I would like to try using watercolours + pen and ink for the next version.

Are the portents… real? 

Yes. 

What should I do if I encounter a portent? 

Be careful and alert!! And also willing to be a bit perplexed, this is the best way to experience a portent. Then come to our 0800-REPORT A PORTENT hotline, which has not been used to its full potential (it has been used once; I love the person who filled it out but I’m convinced there are more portents not being documented). I would love to hear about more portents! Or hear interpretations of existing portents. 

How can I get a zine? 

The first two portents zines are on the Mostly Good Ideas zine page! (one of them is a janky scan but it will be fixed at some point) So you can read them right now. Email me if you want a printable version. textile portents will be up there soon too probably, I’m currently distributing the initial print run. Yay for zines and fun projects!